Lecture 1: Introduction to the Ancient Near East: Geography, Climate, and Rediscovery

Flashcards covering course syllabus details, foundational concepts, historiography, regional geography, archaeology methods, and chronological periods from the introductory lecture of ANE/MES M50A.

What General Education requirement does the course ANE/MES M50A fulfill at UCLA?

Foundations of Society and Culture

What is the primary instructional focus of ANE/MES M50A rather than historical sequence?

Cultural developments

What are the three components and percentage weights that make up the grading criteria for ANE/MES M50A?

Participation (Lecture Attendance & Discussion) at $20\%$, Quizzes (8 quizzes) at $20\%$, and Mid-Term and Final exams at $60\%$

According to G. K. Chesterton, what disadvantage comes from men not knowing the past?

They do not know the present, because history provides the hill or high point of vantage to see the town or age in which they live.

What specific cognitive biases and modes of deterministic thinking were highlighted for students to avoid?

Exceptionalism, Catastrophism ("Doomerism")/fatalism, my-side bias, colonialist or post-colonialist bias, conservative or liberal bias, materialist thinking (e.g., Marxism), false dichotomies/binaries, presentism, and "Us vs. Them" thinking.

What is the literal Greek translation of the regional name "Mesopotamia"?

"Between the Rivers"

What is the literal Greek meaning of the name "Anatolia"?

"East" or "Rising" [of sun] (also referred to as Asia Minor)

What Latin name corresponds to the Levant?

Syria-Palaestina

Which five areas of cultural influence were highlighted as reasons to study the Ancient Near East?

Literature, Art, Law, Religion, and Language

In what year did Napoleon launch his expedition to Egypt?

$$1798$$

What artifact, discovered by Napoleon's soldiers in 1799, is depicted here, and what three scripts appear on its face?

The Rosetta Stone; inscribed with Egyptian hieroglyphs, Demotic, and Greek containing a decree of Ptolemy V.

What is this oval enclosure called, and how did it facilitate the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs?

A cartouche; it encloses royal names, which, when correlated with Greek references to "kings", allowed scholars to decipher the hieroglyphs.

Who developed the Three-Age System classifying the technological evolution of tools into the Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age?

Christian Thomsen ($1788\text{--}1865$)

What is the Akkadian translation of the archaeological term "tell", and how is a tell formed?

"Destroyed city"; it is an artificial mound created by successive settlements built one atop another over time.

What archaeological feature, formed by sequential layers of habitation, is illustrated in this cross-section diagram?

A tell

Which modern Arabic place name preserves the ancient name of Jericho as an archaeological mound?

Tell es-Sultan

Which scholar wrote the 1925 work "The Dawn of European Civilization", demonstrating an early archaeological focus on relating Near Eastern material to European culture?

V. Gordon Childe

What are the four primary bases used for naming archaeological periods?

Climatic phases (e.g., Ice Age), technological traditions or specific artifacts (e.g., Bronze Age, Clovis period), historical phases of political regimes (e.g., Ur III period), or historical floruits of archaeological type sites (e.g., Uruk period).

What are the date boundaries and key cultural development of the Early Bronze Age in the Ancient Near East?

$3800\text{--}2000\text{ BCE}$; known as the first urban period.

What major characteristic defined the Middle Bronze Age ($2000\text{--}1500\text{ BCE}$)?

Internationalism

Which power was the dominant superpower of the Near East during the Late Bronze Age ($1500\text{--}1200\text{ BCE}$)?

Egypt

What broad historical phenomenon occurred during Iron Age I ($1200\text{--}1000\text{ BCE}$)?

Collapse and decline

Which major historical development took place during Iron Age II–III ($1000\text{--}332\text{ BCE}$)?

The rise of the first empires: Assyria, Babylonia, and Persia.

Around what year does the rise of Greece and Rome begin to influence the Near East in this chronology?

$$332\text{ BCE}$$

What is the minimum annual rainfall threshold necessary to support rainfed agriculture in the Near East?

$$200\text{ mm/year}$$